It’s an understatement to say that Secret Invasion didn’t end well. The much-pilloried season finale is now by some distance the worst-reviewed thing Marvel Studios has ever put out, had a list of plot holes a mile long, and has left the MCU with an inexplicably powerful new character future stories will have to write around.
But as bad as the episode was, post-release comments from Secret Invasion director Ali Selim have poured gasoline on the fires of fan fury. Midway through the show, we learned that Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes/War Machine had been replaced by a Skrull, with the finale showing soldiers rescuing the genuine article from Gravik’s base.
We saw the real Rhodes dressed in a hospital gown and struggling to walk, leading many to wonder how long he’s been in Skrull captivity. Selim was asked how long he’d been replaced and said:
“I think his legs not working in the end of episode six and him being in the hospital gown points to [Captain America: Civil War]”
The prospect of Rhodes being a Skrull throughout Infinity War and Endgame has caused turmoil amongst the MCU fanbase, as it means a huge swathe of his character development is now up in smoke. It’s clear this switcheroo hasn’t been fully planned out in advance and, based on the evidence, it doesn’t make sense. So, here are eight reasons why:
8. In ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Rhodes bleeds red
As has been repeatedly demonstrated in Secret Invasion, Skrulls have purple blood. However, when Thanos attacks the Avengers compound in Endgame Rhodes crawls from the damaged War Machine armor bleeding red blood from a cut on his forehead.
It’s possible that this could be more Skrull camouflage making it simply appear he’s bleeding red, though Talos’ death indicates that when a Skrull is under extreme physical stress they’ll struggle to maintain their disguise, so we don’t buy it.
7. Rhodes’ StarkTech leg braces
Soon after Rhodes’ catastrophic spinal injuries in Civil War, Tony Stark built him robotic leg braces enabling him to walk unaided. These went on to appear in Infinity War and Endgame and appeared to be linked directly to his spinal column. If Rhodes had really been replaced by a Skrull soon after the hospital scene in Civil War Stark would have noticed he didn’t need the braces when tuning them for him.
6. Post-injury hospital visits
Leading on from that, any high-ranking government official with the direct ear of the President would have to undergo fairly frequent medical check-ups, particularly if they’d suffered a major spinal injury. If these had happened, medical scanning should reveal that this Rhodes was a Skrull, to say nothing of the Skrull duplicate also having to fake a broken back in X-rays (which we don’t think they could do).
5. War Machine suit security verification
In the climax of Iron Man 3 Rhodes asks Tony Stark to give him access to one of the many suits he’s summoned for the battle against Killian. Stark replies “I’m sorry, they’re only coded to me”. This means there’s some kind of biometric security built into the suits that prevent unauthorized persons from using them, which logically must also apply to the extremely dangerous War Machine armor.
We don’t know what exactly “coded” means, though it seems unlikely that a Skrull can replicate blood tests, brain scans, or retinal scans well enough to fool the suit’s tech and so Skrull Rhodey shouldn’t have been able to use the War Machine suit during Infinity War and Endgame.
4. The timeline of Gravik’s rebellion
As per Secret Invasion‘s fifth episode, we know that ‘The Harvest’ consists of the DNA heroes who fought in Avengers: Endgame‘s Battle of Earth. This was collected under the orders of Nick Fury by a team of Skrulls led by Gravik, meaning Gravik’s rebellion couldn’t have taken shape until after Endgame wrapped up in (the in-universe) 2023.
So it just doesn’t make sense for Rhodes to be impersonated after Civil War, which took place in 2016, seven years before the earliest moment Gravik could begin planning his invasion.
3. Natasha Romanoff would have noticed
We can just about buy that the Rhodes Skrull was so convincing she fooled the other Avengers into thinking she was the real deal, with one exception. Natasha Romanoff is considered the greatest master of deception in the MCU, with her skills including psychological manipulation, an incredible awareness of body language, and the ability to lie so well Fury struggled to create a lie detector she couldn’t fool.
The flip side of that is that she was also very easily able to detect when others were lying to her, as depicted in The Winter Soldier. To put it simply, the Rhodes Skrull simply wouldn’t have been able to interact with Black Widow without her realizing something was amiss.
2. Rhodes visited Thanos’ Garden planet
Secret Invasion rests on the Skrulls’ anger that Fury and Carol Danvers are yet to find them a new planet to call home. But, in Avengers: Endgame, Rhodes visited Thanos’ retirement planet, a beautiful, scenic, resource-heavy and (as confirmed by the ship’s sensors) otherwise entirely uninhabited planet.
If Rhodes were a Skrull at this point how could he not have told his Skrull buddies that their dream home is sitting out there in the galaxy just waiting to be moved into?
1. Completely cheapens Rhodes’ story
Admittedly this isn’t a plothole, but it has to be said. If Rhodes really was replaced soon after receiving his spinal injury in Civil War it erases years of interesting character development. Among others Rhodes and Stark’s heart-to-heart at the end of Civil War (one of the best acting moments in the MCU) doesn’t have any meaning, we didn’t get to see Rhodes serving as an Avenger during the blip, and, most obviously, it tramples over the emotional sight of him watching Stark’s death and attending his funeral in Endgame.
Knowing that this was an alien impostor throughout these movies robs Rhodes’ arc of meaning and, if we were Cheadle, we’d be upset that everything he’s poured into the character has been reset to what it was in 2016.
Let’s hope Selim simply misspoke and clarification is coming that the switch took place more recently than Civil War because as it stands we think this is the single worst storytelling decision Marvel Studios has ever made.
Published: Jul 31, 2023 07:02 am